


Bottled Time and Dreams

by 30degreesandsnowing



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Fluff, Gen, Happy Ending, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 14:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30degreesandsnowing/pseuds/30degreesandsnowing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles's Mom is dying of cancer; Derek Hale just became Alpha.  Stiles has an Awesome Idea.</p>
<p>An AU where Mrs. Stilinski is still alive during Season 1</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bottled Time and Dreams

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said.  “Haven’t seen you around, much.  How are you?”

Once upon a time, Stiles had thought that his mother would always be beautiful.  Four years battling cancer had proven him wrong.  His mother was a skeletal ghost on the hospital bed, brittle as paper and bleached bone white.  She was too tired to smile; too tired to do anything more than slit her eyes to look at him.

Stiles sat down in the chair next to the bed, and picked up her hand.  “I’m good, Mom,” he said.  “Still getting awesome grades, eating all my veggies and brushing my teeth at night.  No worries here.”

“Good,” Mom said.  “Is it morning?  I must have slept through Daddy’s visit.”  Her eyelids fluttered as she spoke, but that was normal.  Mom had a hard time staying awake, nowadays.  “Shouldn’t you be in school?”  Her eyes slid shut.

“No, it’s still night.  I snuck past the nurses,” Stiles said.  “And it’s Friday.  Well, Saturday morning.  Dad’ll be here in a few hours.  I just wanted to talk.”

Mom said nothing.  She had probably fallen asleep.  Breaking in to the ICU at three in the morning was a bad idea, but Allison and Scott were reconciling, Jackson had vanished, stranding him at the old Hale house, and the Argents were cleaning up the mess Kate and Peter had made.  Stiles had not wanted to return to an empty house, but Derek drove him back to his house once the new Alpha realized Stiles had no plans to leave.

_“These woods are dangerous,”_ was all Derek had said, after ordering Stiles into the Camaro.

Stiles had grabbed his spare car keys and come here, to the hospital, instead of home, because he couldn’t keep it all in anymore.  Peter was dead, and Allison’s crazy aunt was a serial killer who’d tortured Derek for weeks, and Stiles had helped kill a man.  Werewolf.  Apart from a few suspicious looks when Stiles turned up at crime scenes, Dad was too busy, between work and the hospital, to notice the new crazy that had invade Beacon Hills.  Mom loved secrets, and he had to tell someone.

Was it selfish, when she was so sick?  Did it even matter, when she was too tired to hear him?

Stiles rubbed his thumb along her hand.  “Did you know Scott’s a werewolf?” he asked.  “He howls at the moon and everything.  He has been for a couple months.  It’s really awesome, except for the part where the Argents and his Alpha were trying to kill everyone.” 

Mom didn’t say anything, just continued to breathe slow and shallow.

“Anyway, all the murder-y stuff is over, I think.  Hopefully.  The Alpha attacked Lydia but her vitals are stable.  She just needs to wake up and be okay, because I don’t think I could deal with anymore of this if she dies.  And if I’m not around to help, who knows what kind of trouble Scott will get into?  And now that Derek’s the new Alpha, it’s gonna be … gonna be ….”  Stiles trailed off, and looked back down at Mom’s sleeping face.  “Oh,” he said.  “I have to go.  I’ll be back soon, I swear.”

He stumbled into the side table as he stood, spilling the stack of magazines and books to the floor.  Mom frowned and almost opened her eyes.  “Stiles?”

“Sorry, sorry!  I’m leaving.  Um, go back to sleep, Mom, I’ll be back tomorrow.”  Stiles kissed his mother goodbye, and raced frantically for the door.

 

Stiles’s Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years before.  She had gone through surgery and chemotherapy, and remission, and recurrence, and more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, until December, when the doctor’s had told her there was nothing more they could do.  The cancer had whittled her down to skin and bones, until she looked nothing like his mother, and Stiles would come home from the hospital and stare at pictures of her from before the diagnosis, when she was healthy and bright.

The doctors had estimated she had two weeks left, three weeks before Christmas.  Three months later, Mom was still hanging on, and Stiles loved her and hated her for it.

“If I can just make it to Christmas,” she’d told Dad, when they thought Stiles couldn’t hear.  “I don’t want to die right before Christmas, and have that hanging over your heads for the rest of your lives.  I can make Christmas.”

“January 18th is our 20th anniversary.  I can make January 18th.”

“It’s just a week until Valentine’s day.  I want one more Valentine’s day.  Can you find me something to give to Stiles?”

“I want to go to church on Ash Wednesday.  I couldn’t go last year.  We’ve still got the wheelchair, right?”

“The trees are going to be getting green, soon.  I always liked spring.”

All the while, she got thinner and weaker and paler, like one day Stiles would come to the hospital to find that she’d faded away completely.  Stiles felt guilty, because he wanted it all to just be over, and then he would think about not having Mom at all, not even in the hospital, watching her try to laugh when he talked about what stupid stunt Scott had recently pulled, or how he’d aced a test, or how his new medication was doing, and he wanted her to hang on for every second.  He’d never be old enough to let her go.

Mom went back to the hospital four weeks ago, and been in and out of the ICU until Melissa McCall pulled some strings to have her moved permanently to the ICU.  The care was better, the nurse-patient ratio was lower, and the bedside chairs were more comfortable.  The only downside was the visiting hours, which were from 11am to 8:30 pm daily.  The rest of the hospital allowed 24 hour visits, provided the patients agreed.

Dad visited Mom on his lunch hour and after dinner every day, and Stiles visited after school.  They both tried to spend Sunday with her.  This had been their routine for the last four years, whenever Mom was admitted.

Dad had sat Stiles down last weekend and told him that Mom wasn’t coming home.

“Her organs have started failing,” Dad told him.  “You can spend as much time as you need with her.”

 

Stiles didn’t remember driving back to the Hale place.  When he arrived there, the Argents were gone, as were all traces of the fight.  The broken glass from him and Jackson’s Molotov Cocktails, Allison’s arrows, the blood and burned traces had all been swept away and covered with forest brush.  Stiles climbed out of his jeep and felt like the previous hours’ battle had never happened.

Except Kate’s body was inside the burned shell of a house, waiting for the police department to show up and find her.

Stiles wondered what Derek had done with the Alpha’s body.  Had he buried Peter like he buried Laura? 

“Derek!” he called, shaking off thought of murder and murderers and starting toward the house.  He should have called Derek’s phone before coming all the way out here.  No sane person would still be at the burned out shell of him family home after he partook in a spot of murder, when there was a body in the living room.  The wrap-around porch creaked and shook beneath his sneakers.  “Derek!”

“What are you doing here,” Derek said from behind him.

Stiles yelped, spinning around to see Derek leaning against his jeep like it belonged to him.  “Oh my God!  Why do you do that?!”

Derek just looked at him.  He looked worse than the last time Stiles had seen him, a handful of hours before.  His mouth was an ugly, self-deprecating shape, and the hollows under his eyes were clearly visible in the moon-soaked night.  As tired and drawn as Derek looked, though, he stood straight and proud, his shoulders back and his feet planted firmly.  At four in the morning, Stiles was drooping, fueled only by adrenaline and desperate hope.

Stiles breathed deeply, twice.  “And do you understand how weird it is for you to be here?  I thought the Argents were going to call the police and blame Kate for everything.  Why are you here?”

“I was burying my uncle,” Derek said.

Oh.  That was probably a good reason to be out and about.  Also, Derek was a werewolf, and presumably could hear the police coming before they arrived.

“That’s not what I can to talk to you about,” Stiles said.  “Even though I brought it up, the subject it closed.  I need to talk to you.”

 “You should go home and stay home, this time,” Derek said.   “The police are going to be here, soon.”

Stiles said, “Wait, if the police are on their way, why are you here?  Shouldn’t you be, like, running for the border?”

Derek stared at him for a long moment.  “You really want to make jokes, when you and your friend are the ones who put me on their radar?”

“Are you ever going to let that go?  We helped you!  It’s totally because of me that you were able to kill the Alpha.”

“My uncle.”  Derek continued to stare at Stiles, letting the words fall like bricks between them.

Stiles only faltered for a moment.  “Your crazy uncle Alpha, yeah, I got that, I was there.”  He took in a deep breath.  “Anyway, I don’t care about that.”

Derek raised one brow.  “Really,” he said.

Okay, it was a lie.  Derek knew it was a lie, Stiles knew it was a lie, and they bother knew the other knew it was a lie.  Stiles both had no idea why Derek had killed his own uncle, and was intensely curious as to how he’d brought himself to do it.  The dude was crazy, yeah, but he was also Derek’s only living relative.  Mom was in pain, had been sick and dying for years, and Stiles was still unable to tell her that it was enough, and she could go.  Scott had even wanted to kill the Alpha, perfect solution.

The best guess Stiles had was that Derek wasn’t sure Scott killing the Alpha would cure him, and instead Scott would become the Alpha, and the thought of Scott as his boss had scared Derek into murder.  Stiles couldn’t blame him for that.

“I want you to bite my Mom,” Stiles said.

Derek stared at him.  It felt different from his earlier stare, which had been sort of judgmental and bitter.  This stare was clearly shocked.

After a long moment, Derek jerked his head toward the jeep.  “Explain,” he said, and climbed into the passenger side seat.

“Well, you need a pack,” Stiles said, once they were on the road.  “That’s why your uncle bit Scott, and why you wanted Scott to work with you.  But Scott can hold a grudge like nobody’s business, so he won’t be keen to join you now that you’re the Alpha.  Lydia might turn, but that’s still only one person, and according to my research a stable pack has at least four members.  So I think you should turn my Mom.”

Now that he’d actually said it out loud, Stiles was nervous and terrified.  Would it work?  Would Derek agree?  What if Mom died before he could convince Derek?

“Why not you both?  Your mother only makes three, if Lydia turns.”  Derek asked, instead.

“Because I’m not dying of terminal cancer,” Stiles said in a rush.

Derek didn’t look surprised, because he was as asshole and a creeper and probably already knew about the cancer.  Instead, he looked, well, on a normal person, Stiles would have said the expression was thoughtful.  On Derek Hale, it looked like he was considering his next kill.

_Please,_ Stiles thought.

“She has cancer?” Derek finally asked, as Stiles stopped driving them in circles and started toward the hospital.

“Ovarian.  Stage IV.  She’s been sick a while,” Stiles said.

Stiles rarely talked about the cancer.  Scott and Dad had been there from the beginning, Mrs. McCall had access to all the hospital’s charts, and his therapist let him talk around it.  Stiles wiped at his eyes.

“The doctors told her she has two weeks to live three months ago.”

Derek said, “Tell me about her.”

Stiles had prepared this argument on the way over, if only he could remember it.  “She’s smart, and fearless.  She won a scholarship in high school and got to study in Japan for her senior year.  She’s good with people, and could probably help you with that serial killer vibe– never mind.  Um, she used to go to the children’s oncology ward and do story time every week, after she was diagnosed.  She met my Dad after she picked his pocket at a festival in Ohio.  She has a soft spot for lost causes.  She used to own a coffee shop in town, but—” _we had to sell it to cover hospital bills._   Stiles couldn’t finish the sentence.

Derek raised one eyebrow at him.

“What?” Stiles demanded.

“Is she coherent?”  Derek ignored the question.

“Yeah, but she drifts off a lot.  She’s on a lot of opiates for the pain.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Derek said.

 

Derek wouldn’t let Stiles stay in the room while he talked to Stiles’s Mom.

“I’m asking her,” Derek said, “not you.  Stay here.”

Stiles tried to wait just outside, but Derek cursed, “Dammit, Stiles, no,” and one of the night nurses started down the hall.  He headed for Lydia’s room, instead, and hunkered down on the floor by her bedside, fiddling with his phone.  He had fourteen missed calls and eight texts from Dad.  He ignored them, and futilely tried to hear the conversation down the hall.  Maybe he should have taken the bite from Peter.  Then he would at least know what was going on.

“It’s not that I don’t trust him with my Mom,” he said aloud.  “It’s that I don’t trust him, in general.  Remember that time he threatened to rip my throat out?  Or that time he slammed my head into the steering wheel?”

If Derek had been there, Stiles would have been getting that, ‘you’re an idiot, I can hear it when you lie, remember?’ look.

“Okay, and that time he saved me from his crazy uncle.  And Scott sort of admitted Derek’s kept him from hurting people a couple times.  And I did ask him for a favor.”  Stiles glared at his phone.  “Fuck, how long does it take to bite someone?”

As it turned out, seventy-three minutes.  That was when Derek texted Stiles, ‘ _alright you can come back_.’

Stiles jumped to his feet and then had to dive back to the floor, when he realized that a nurse was outside.  Two jittery minutes later, and Stiles made it back to his mother’s room, slid to a stop next to her bed and stared between her and Derek.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Stiles,” Mom said.  “Oh, sweetheart.”

She was sitting up, and Derek was turning the pain medication back up.  Black lines were fading from his veins, and Mom looked more awake than she had in weeks.

“Did you bite her?” he asked Derek.

“Yes,” Derek said.  “Now we just need to wait and see if it takes.”

Stiles sat on the bed bedside Mom.  “Oh my God,” he said, “Mom,” and hugged her.

Stiles didn’t notice that Derek had slipped out of the room until later, when the morphine kicked back in and Mom had fallen back asleep.  He was too busy stroking her hair, and listening to her breathe, and hoping, for the first time in three months.

 

Stiles was in the middle of a test during fifth period on Monday when he got a call from his Dad.

“Come to the hospital,” Dad had said, and so Stiles was at the hospital.

Mom was sitting up in the hospital bed, cross-legged and bright eyed.  She didn’t look healthy, but she didn’t look a step out of the grave, either.  Dad was sitting in the chair by the bed, his face a heartbreaking mix of hope and fear.  He couldn’t stop staring at her smile, at her skin, and her eyes, and he was gripping her hand with a ferocity that would have left her bruised six months before.

“Mom?” Stiles asked, coming into the room.

Mom laughed, and it sounded like church bells ringing.  “Sweetheart,” she said.  “Oh, Stiles, I’m feeling so much better!”

Stiles hesitated, glancing at his Dad.  This was … it had worked.  Oh, my God, it had worked.

Mom held her free arm out to him, and Stiles fell into her side, burying his tears in her shoulder.

“Mom,” he said.  “Is this for real?”

“Yes, it is,” said a voice from the doorway.

Dad, Stiles, and Mom all turned to the doorway, where the oncologist in charge of the case was standing, a stack of scans in his arms, and a huge smile on his face.

“I’d like a to run a few more tests, Mrs. Stilinski, but my preliminary assessment it, well, a miracle.  I think you’ve gone into remission.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow my Tumblr (tumblr.com/blog/30degreesandsnowing) for fic updates and fic snippets that are too short to post here.


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